


Of moonlight and covens.

by LunnVic



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: "just fuck him already" said satan, Aftercare, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Anal Sex, Animal Sacrifice, Biting, Brother-Sister Relationships, Friends to Lovers, Hair Washing, Hair-pulling, Hand Jobs, Inspired by Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Masturbation, Mild Blood, Morning Sex, Mutual Pining, Overthinking, Ritual Sex, Sexual Tension, Teasing, but witches can play volleyball too, coven - Freeform, not exactly canon compliant, they're 25 years old or so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:20:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25357621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunnVic/pseuds/LunnVic
Summary: "The Lupercalia was divided into three nights for a reason. The Matching, the Courting, the Hunt.The first night was to talk, to know each other. The second was to touch, to remember each other. The third night was to fuck, to put in practice every little thing learned the previous two.So the Lupercalia was all fun and games until you got paired with someone you disliked. It was uncommon, but not impossible.Right in front of him, Hajime frowned."---Or Tooru and Hajime are witches and got paired together in a fertility (sex) ritual.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 37
Kudos: 238





	1. The Matching

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to upload this on February, when I wrote its 20.200 words, but got distracted... So I thought it was cool to share it at Oikawa's Week and before Haikyuu's ending (don't touch me I'm weak).
> 
> Sorry if you spot some mistakes, I'm not a native speaker and my friend An just had time to revise this first chapter. Thanks, An!
> 
> "BONK! to the horny jail!" meme goes here

Tooru clicked his tongue, looking for something to clean his hands with.

The Lupercalia was held every year in the middle of the woods, in the middle of February, in the middle of everything, and every coven of Sendai reunited together with long smiles and long eyeliners and even longer coats. Cold spells hanged here and there, from branches and fingers, and there was one especially glowy hanging between the teeth of the first lamb of 2020. Well, more like between the teeth of the skull of the first lamb of 2020. The rest of it would be history soon, Tooru’s hands still sticky from cutting its meat.

“Here,” said his mother, giving him a napkin and a chunk of snow for him to wash away the remnants of blood and fat. “Everything ok?”

“Yes,” he answered, feeling the icy sensation of the snowball against his skin. Thanks to the cold spells his body didn’t feel any cold (hence came their name), and he was familiar with them, but it was still mesmerizing to see how the snow evaporated almost instantly to the contact with his hand. “I’m… really nervous, but that’s fine. I should have done this years ago.”

Her mother laughed, as beautiful as the winter night. When he was a kid, Tooru wanted to be like her. Now that he was almost twenty-five, he was certain that he would never be. Tooru’s mother was too much for anyone, even for his father, even for his sister and his niece, but that was fine. He’d shine in other places.

“I told you so!”, and that was her sister, Takeru following her like a stinky street dog, still too young to stay the full night but too old to not to be curious about it. “And, after it, you’re gonna regret it even more”.

He growled instead of answering because she was right. The Lupercalia was a ritual for the young and the single; it nurtured the woods and the coven with fertility and life, and renewed the ancient enchantments that fell all upon Sendai. It was totally normal to join the Lupercalia as soon as you become of age (well, more normal than rare), but his parents never pressured him into submitting himself to it. After all, it had to be voluntary. No one could force lust on someone.

And lust was the main ingredient of the Lupercalia.

It wasn’t like he didn’t want to do it, before. He wanted it. But Hajime didn’t, and they were a pack. Anywhere you go, I go, blah. Tooru felt uncomfortable doing something if Hajime wasn’t around, even if the said thing was blessing their district through fucking a random in the middle of the forest.

But that year, Hajime had volunteered, so Tooru had done it as well.

«Why this year? », he had asked, days before, while taking the train back to their ugly Tokyo flat. «Oh! Wait, I see… Are you interested in someone of the new covens, Iwa-chan? »

«Of course not, » Hajime had answered, rolling his eyes. And then he had just shrugged and: «I felt this was the time. »

«You felt it. »

«Yes. »

«So… you’re horny. »

«That’s not what I said. »

«And you need the Lupercalia to get laid. It’s okay, Iwa-chan. Not anyone can have this face. » and a theatrical sigh: «I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to you, with yours…»

But he liked Hajime’s face. He liked all of him, that was the fucking problem and that was the thing that was gnawing at his insides, like an animal trying to get out with teeth and claws.

This year, the Lupercalia was celebrated near home, so they could go back to Tokyo every morning to keep their routine. Going to uni, then to practice… but, instead of ending their days into their crusty student flat, those three nights they’d have to take the train back home (back to the woods).

“It’s starting!” her sister almost screamed, half jumping, half dancing. “Are you nervous? I was always, always nervous. Ah, how I miss it.”

The reason she missed so much was called Takeru and now he had fourteen years old. His father was human, so he couldn’t join. He could never join. The coven, their life. After all, a witch life was too _different_ for a human to even understand, and it was always better to leave them behind.

“C’mon, Tooru,” said his mother, passing her fingers through his hair in a last attempt to comb it. “We are going back to the town now. Have fun!”

“Good luck!”, shouted her sister.

Ah, luck. Did he really need it? Everyone in the coven was more or less good-looking. The worst thing that could happen to him was to be paired with Ushijima. A shimmer went down his spine, cold and unpleasant, cradling that horrible thought. God. Ushijima was actually in one of the covens… So there was a possibility of Tooru being paired with him. What would he do if…? «Maybe I could fake some illness».

But anyone else would be just fine! And Tooru felt their eyes on him while he joined the rest of the group, a pack of human wolves that were laughing and dancing and talking to each other like they were old friends. Because they were. Tooru was just a few years late to the party, and now everyone wanted to make up the lost time.

He found Hajime almost at the other end, waving goodbye to his parents, with a big and savage smile that showed those sharp-looking teeth that Tooru maybe or maybe not had wanted on his skin for years. He looked happy. Eager. But who wouldn’t? It was a free date, all in the name of fertility and love and blah, blah. A magnificent excuse to get laid.

“Oikawa!” was Hajime’s way to say hello. “Showing yourself off?”

“Of course,” he laughed, chin up to the sky, so conscious of the looks and the whispers and the little laughs. “Want them to take a closer look before one of them wins the prize.”

Hajime snorted.

“The prize of fucking a loser.”

“Hey!”

Something was off. Hajime seemed nervous, of course, but there was also that look in his eyes, like he couldn’t wait for the Matching to start. Tooru could smell from there the scent of roasted lamb, honey dripping from it, people salivating because of it and because of the countdown. Soon he’d have someone to take care of, he’d take their wrist and tie it to his own, he’d eat the lamb and the cider and the bread beside the one the woods had chosen for him. Tooru was itchy, anxious, like his skin wasn’t truly his anymore.

“Hey, Oikawa,” said a witch then, maybe younger than him, one that had been ogling him in some other rituals, with soft black eyes and even softer lips. “I didn’t know you were submitting yourself this year.”

“Me neither,” Tooru smiled.

Hajime rolled his eyes, but she laughed, walking past them with her friend to her side like a cute accessory and not a person at all.

“What a pity! Should have known before, I could have made an offering.”

“It’s not too late.”

“Hope you can tell apart the touch of my skin, Oikawa.”

“How couldn’t I? So white.”

They walked away, laughing, and Hajime looked at him with arched eyebrows.

“Don’t look at me like that, I told you! I’m a trophy!”

He shook his head.

“Just… don’t cheat, Oikawa. He will know.”

Tooru frowned, confused.

“Of course not… He will give me a good one; I won’t need to look for it. That’s the point, isn’t it?”

Masked witches started to separate them in rows so, if Hajime wanted to answer, he didn’t get to do it. The light of the torches made everyone look as if they were trembling, and maybe they were. Tooru was, at least. The witch in front of him lent him a cloth of silk and asked him to put it over Hajime’s eyes. He obeyed. As he moved to do it, he felt hands on his hair, on his neck. The same witch gave another piece of silk to Hajime and asked the same of him, pointing at the girl at his right. Tooru wasn’t finished tying the knot of Hajime’s bandage before the smooth fabric was already over his own eyes, blinding him.

And.

“Extend your left hand,” ordered a voice.

Tooru knew that voice. It was deep as humid dirt, cavernous, and it felt as if it were straining through each one of his pores. Inhuman. It sounded like pointed teeth and too many eyes and too many hands and then there was in fact a hand (a hand?) on his nape, caressing it, diving into his hair. Someone at his left gasped and then sighed. The hand (or the claw) at his hair pulled, insisting, and he remembered what the voice had asked of him. The point of his fingers touched another one’s fingers. The other hand was warm and sweaty.

“Dance.”

«Ah, » he thought. «It’s happening».

So the music started.

Tooru knew he didn’t have to dance, not really. He just had to keep going, keep touching, fingers to fingers, hand to hand, wandering with eyes closed until the music stopped and his body no longer wanted to move. But there was no music. It wasn’t music; he knew it as he knew blood was fake on movies. Because the thing his ears were chewing was another creature, another spell, another howl. It was someone breathing really fast, a moan underneath, the sticky sound of mouth against something definitely not a mouth. Of tongues sucking and nails scratching. Music for and from the woods.

Tooru’s hand kept searching, searching, following the rhythm of the no-music, and he didn’t realize until moments later that his body was moving, too. Walking (or maybe dancing) forward, His whispers in his left ear, saying «cold, cold» or «colder» or «it’s starting to get hotter, love». «Cold, hot». _That way, yes, love._ «Hot». He had never heard His voice before. It felt like volcanic lava dripping from his ears right into his groin. He wanted to open his lips and… what? Answer? At his right, a soft moan. Yeah, it felt like that, too.

 _Keep dancing,_ He commanded. _You’re so close…_

And then the lava wasn’t in his ears, but in his fingertips, and Tooru gasped.

The hand of the other witch took his with such a force Tooru heard more than felt the crack of his own fingers. His body stopped moving. The sighs and the music stopped whispering.

 _Stop,_ He said.

Silence. If he could call silence to the echo of his own heartbeat inside his ribcage, screaming. Tooru shallowed to drown it, but it went faster each second the voice kept him waiting. His match’s hand caressed his, and Tooru felt rough and blunt fingerprints, short nails. He let him roam through Tooru’s long fingers, and then go down to his wrist, stopping a brief second over the bombing pulse underneath that thin layer of skin. Tooru tried to withdraw: didn’t want anyone to know he was this nervous. Not even his match.

The voice said something else, but Tooru wasn’t paying attention. And that’s why he was so confused when he heard the witch right before him giving a step forward, their hand going up, up to his arm and shoulder and neck and («This is happening too fast») their fingers touching his scalp before tugging at the cloth blinding him. Tooru mimicked their movements (short hair, so short), realizing that He wanted them to look at each other.

«Who are you? » Tooru thought.

But, before even having time to guess, he thought of Hajime. Had he been matched with a girl to have fun with, brute and short like him? Or had He had chosen a guy for him, a guy for Tooru to have nightmares with for the rest of his life?

_Open your eyes._

So Tooru did.

Right in front of him, Hajime frowned.

The Lupercalia was all fun and games until you got paired with someone you disliked.

It was uncommon, but not impossible. After all, Ushijima was there, less than a meter from Tooru, and if the voice had waited just two more seconds to tell them to stop, he’d be now talking with Ushijima about what he liked in bed.

But the woods had given him Hajime, and Tooru couldn’t say that he disliked him.

However, Hajime himself didn’t seem happy with the result.

Of course, Tooru understood. Because if Hajime had wanted to give him a try he could have done it a hundred times before. At any party, at any sleepover. But now? You were _required_ to end the ritual; you just couldn’t leave because you didn’t like your partner.

“This is weird,” Tooru said, after filling his wooden plate with the roasted lamb that had been making them salivate all night (and after tying his own wrist to Hajime’s with that silky cord that marked them as a Lupercalian couple. Tooru couldn’t stop staring at it).

Hajime nod, utterly silent, while they looked for a place to sit and eat. Everything had the feeling of a summer camp, with the bonfire and the laughs and the thin clothes, but then there were the whispers and the electricity and the expectation that came with the desire. Here and there, the couples were already in deep conversation about their past sex partners, their past Lupercaliae, their soon-past fantasies; because the Lupercalia was divided into three nights for a reason. The Matching, the Courting, the Hunt.

The first night was to talk, to know each other. The second was to touch, to remember each other. The third night was to fuck, to put in practice every little thing learned the previous two.

Tooru felt as if He had conceded him a gift that didn’t want to be gifted.

“Ok, let’s get over this,” groaned Tooru, tense. “It will be quick; you know my sex curriculum even better than me.”

“Don’t call it like that!” barked Hajime, but there was a glimpse of a smile behind the scold, so Tooru smiled for him.

“C’mon, you should be happy, Iwa-chan, you got the prize!”

“I didn’t want the prize.”

“ _Everyone_ wants the prize,” he insisted, eyes-rolling. Better to make it lighter as possible. They will deal with the dangerous part when they were naked and touching each other tomorrow. And that would be more than twenty hours later. They could play and laugh now.

A few couples from them, Tooru caught the sound of a laugher he had heard before. He looked for it, finding those soft black eyes. The witch seemed delighted with her match, a lanky boy with a jaw as sharp as a knife, but when their eyes met through the field she arched an eyebrow at him. And then she looked at Hajime, asking a question without a single sound. Tooru just shrugged. He was as confused as her.

“Making advances for the next Lupercalia?”, asked Hajime, looking at him right in the eye.

“I would never”, he answered, maintaining the smirk in its place. “I’m satisfied with how this turned out. I mean, it could be worse!”. Hajime raised his eyebrows. “I could be paired with Ushijima!”

And there it was: the reaction he had been wanting. His friend frowned, almost repulsed by the thought, and shook his head.

“You’d find a way to cancel the whole Lupercalia.”

“True,” he agreed. “And maybe you and I can find a way to get out of this one, too. But first, we have to act as if we were really into fucking each other, so! Tell me, Iwa-chan, what do I ignore about your sex CV?”

There was a brief silence, Hajime looking at him in a weird way. Like if he was so offended by Tooru’s words he couldn’t even part his lips to speak. And, finally:

“The Lupercalia is inevitable, Oikawa.” His voice sounded deep and low, rusty at the edges. “You can’t decide you don’t want to take part anymore just because you don’t like the thought of sleeping with me at the Hunt. When I decided to volunteer, it was already knowing that maybe the woods could pair me with you.” Tooru gulped and started to open his mouth to retort, or maybe to say sorry, but Hajime kept talking. “So I’m sorry you got stuck with me, but we are doing this.”

“Iwai…”

“And if you really don’t wanna do it… just say it. Retire and the woods will restart the Lupercalia without you.”

Ah, fuck. Tooru could swear he heard his own stomach eating itself while he tried to pick the right words. He’d been trying to hide so desperately his own panic that he hadn’t stopped to think how Hajime could feel about it. Unwanted. Unfitted. As if Tooru hadn’t been in love with him since he could remember.

He lied, of course, with a smile as sweet as the honey dripping from the lamb on his plate:

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Iwa-chan. I can do this. You’re still the best option among the worst ones.”

Silence. Besides them, a little lewd laugh. A shimmer went down his spine when recognizing some words, brutally coming back to the Lupercalia. Those people were already planning their third night while he and Hajime were still trying to digest that they were each other’s match. God, they were so bad at this. So green.

“So,” Tooru said, clearing his throat. “How do you like it?”

Hajime clicked his tongue.

“Hard.”

Oh.

So he really wanted to end it as soon as possible.

“Poor girls,” he laughed (nervously), and Hajime looked away, something red-shaded all over his nose and cheeks. “Oh, wait, not only the girls, I suppose.”

After all, the woods would have never paired them together if Hajime weren’t into guys as well. Benefits of being part of a coven: no one gave a fuck about your likings.

“Why are you so surprised? I told you last year.”

“That you liked both?”

“Yes?”

“Did you tell me when I was drunk?”

“You were drunk?”

“Maybe?”

“This whole conversation is stupid.”

Tooru laughed and, to his surprise, Hajime did, too. Of course Tooru remembered, and of course he had been drunk back then. He also remembered crying at his bed, a few hours later, because even if Hajime also liked boys that didn’t mean he also liked _him._ And that was fine. He was used to it by then.

“Have you been with a guy already?”, Tooru asked.

“No.”

Tooru would appreciate if his own ego wasn’t this fucking petty. He didn’t want to be glad to be his first.

“You?”

“I’ve been with both.”

“Which one do you prefer?”

Hajime sounded sincerely curious, as if he had wanted to make that question for a long time, never finding a good moment for it.

“Guys? I think. And you?”

“Girls, I think.”

“Yeah, that sounds like you.”

Hajime laughed a bit (another victory for him), and then his friend was asking again:

“How do _you_ like it?”

Tooru used that moment to take a bit of lamb. What did he want to answer? Did he want to be explicit or…? How much Hajime wanted to hear? Or, if his match weren’t Hajime, what did Tooru would answer? The entire situation would be different then. Because he enjoyed to flirt, to put on a show, but Hajime knew him too well. With any other, telling the truth would be a promise for things to come. With Hajime, telling the truth would be too much.

So he stayed at the surface.

“Hard, too,” he finally said. “I like to top. Well, more like _to be_ on top, but not to…” Tooru cleared his throat. God, sincerity sucked. “I like to be on control, you know.”

“Yeah,” Hajime answered. “That sounds like you.”

Tooru recognized his own words in his and smiled:

“Does it?”

“Yes.”

They eat in silence, ignoring the other conversations. Half of them were already exploring lighter topics, having finished the main one, and the other half kept talking about sex, but more on the “story time” side. Tooru realized then that even if he knew with how many girls Hajime had had an affair (and how many of them had ended in sex), they were never the kind of friends that shared the details. “Hard” was the first thing he ever knew about Hajime’s likings and that was because it was explicitly required to _communicate_ with your partner in the Lupercalia.

«So, for fucks sake, communicate», he said to himself.

But communication had never been a problem between Hajime and him. And now Tooru looked at him, and Hajime was looking away, away at the other couples with lips closed tight and something dark and cold behind his green eyes.

“But why this year?”, he asked then. Again.

Hajime locked his eyes with Tooru’s.

“You’re gonna laugh at me.”

“Well, Iwa-chan, I _always_ laugh at you. And then you hit me. And then I do it again and you hit me again and…”

“My parents met at the Lupercalia when they were twenty-five.”

One, two, three seconds of silence. And Tooru needed two more to understand:

“They fell in love at the Lupercalia?”

“Yes.”

“So you thought it was gonna happen to you too? That’s almost impossible!”

“I know, Oikawa.”

Hajime was looking at his own hands and not to Tooru’s face. The color red was there again, too, and suddenly Tooru felt inadequate at so many levels, as if he had cheated in a game. As if his longing had reeked so much that He had reacted to it. _Take him,_ Tooru could almost hear the woods saying. _Take him this once and shut the fuck up._

Tooru couldn’t say anything else, because he understood. Because he also had hoped to connect with someone else. With someone that could take his childhood friend out of his head.

Not this year, it seemed.

«Hard», Hajime had said.

The Lupercalia was about sex. So it was normal for Tooru to think about sex, about having sex with Hajime, about having sex with Hajime at the Hunt. It was part of the ritual, expectations laced with lust and with something else. But Tooru didn’t want to touch himself (even knowing that almost the entirety of the coven was already on it).

He felt bad just thinking about it. Horrible. Like if Hajime could know what he had done, the next day, only by looking at him in the eye. So he preferred to have his hands far, far away from his dick rather than feeling filthy at practice in the morning.

But Hajime had said he liked it hard, and Tooru liked it like that too and he couldn’t help imagine his teeth on his neck and his torso against his back and having him inside _right now._

And then back to feeling guilty again.

The loop lasted hours. «What a torture», he thought once, around half-past three. «And it’s only the first night.»

And the next one was the Courting. Second night, first touch.

Tooru groaned.


	2. The Courting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Hajime shouldn’t be this eager. He shouldn’t want to take the milk and blood the woods were going to give them and spread out the mix all over Tooru's skin, making it whiter, whiter. And even so, even so… he wanted it. He _wanted_ it.
> 
> For someone who had passed years only staring, being allowed to touch was too much.
> 
> Not only allowed: required.

Her sister woke him up with a smile only a coyote would wear better. It was a smile made for the Oikawas, and Tooru had worked on it till it was part of his own legend. But that morning he didn’t want to smile, only to cry and complain and to never leave his bed.

“C’mon, Tooru,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t be like that. Mum has said that Ms. Iwaizumi is really happy for you two to be paired together.”

“She said that? Really?”

His sister nodded while trying to get him out of the bed, pulling from Tooru’s right arm. He let her do it, ending up being dragged to the kitchen too. It was Friday, so they had uni and early practice. And, well…

“Happy St. Valentine’s Day, heartbreaker,” greeted her sister, pointing out a few red and pink letters that she had picked up from the mailbox.

“Oh, no… I totally forgot…”

“The Lupercalia is V Day for witches!”

“I know.”

Tooru sighed. Not only he’ll have to actively try not to think about Hajime that he also will have to deal with… girls. He liked St. Valentine’s Day. It was free chocolate day, for him. And a good day for his ego, too. But Tooru didn’t need more pressure today.

“You don’t seem happy,” her sister said, frowning. “That’s weird.”

“I’m… I’m not into the idea of me and Hajime… you know.”

She just shrugged.

“Not my problem. You shouldn’t have volunteered if you didn’t want to, Tooru.”

“No, I know! But… is there any way to… cheat?”

She looked at him and Tooru’s whole body recoiled. Now he knew how Takeru felt when his mother scolded him. However, she didn’t go hard on him:

“You can’t _cheat_ the woods, Tooru. They know better. And maybe if you two stopped whining and started thinking why He paired you together you’d understand.”

“It’s just because we’re friends!”

“Yeah, sure. It’s just because of that.”

“I don’t understand.”

She had the nerve to roll her eyes again. Then she pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers and frowned, thinking. Finally. A helping hand.

“Look, sex smells.” Tooru wrinkled his nose, disgusted. “I mean, He will know if you didn’t honor the Lupercalia, and at least one of you two will have to enter the lake to clean the proof…”. Her sister shrugged. “So someone has to finish on someone’s thighs”.

“Ew.”

The laugh was unnecessarily loud.

“You brought this upon yourself, kid,” she giggled, high and evil. “You better at least enjoy it.”

“ _You_ are the one enjoying this.”

“Maybe!”

And she laughed again and again and again. That solution? Horrible… and also kind of hot. But Hajime would never agree to something like that. Tooru clicked his tongue, already fed up with his own lust, and started to prepare breakfast.

“Did you ask your sister?”

It was too early for this and Hajime knew it, but he also didn’t plan to ignore the elephant in the room. And Hajime was a man of honor: they _will_ communicate, even if Tooru didn’t like it. Because maybe they haven’t had any need for it, all those years, but they really needed it now.

Hajime sighed when Tooru groaned. «Ah», he thought. «Here we go again. »

“Yeah. You don’t wanna know what she said, really.”

But he told him even so.

After that, their uni team started training. Tooru hadn’t got to be captain, but they listened to him as if he were, so Hajime stared at him while he explained a new something that he’d been planning last week. He always stayed far from him when this happened; let him have his way with them. Tooru fed on attention and praise in the same way a plant absorbed the light, and Hajime knew he couldn’t give it to him without sounding extremely awkward… So he reserved his words for when Tooru really needed them.

But staying at the edge of the group conceded him the silence he now desperately looked for. After all, Hajime preferred to stay away while he thought about that sloppy solution Tooru’s sister had suggested to them. Well, it wasn’t a solution, really. It was them both running away in the only way they could think of.

Hajime didn’t want to run away. He just hoped that the Lupercalia wouldn’t ruin their friendship.

Sometimes he wished Hanamaki and Matsukawa knew that Tooru and he were witches. They were familiar since years ago with the terrible crush Hajime had on his childhood friend, and he already missed the relief he would get by simply talking with them. They’d tease him about the whole «fucking your best friend in the name of Satan» thing, of course, but they’d help him, too. They’d help them both.

And maybe if he had talked to them instead of just looking and Tooru like that, he didn’t have to pretend he wasn’t thinking about the Courting.

But it was hard because Tooru was right there and in a few hours he was going to be there, too, but with fewer clothes. With none, to be exact. And Hajime shouldn’t be this eager. He shouldn’t want to take the milk and blood the woods were going to give them and spread out the mix all over his skin, making it whiter, whiter. And even so, even so… he wanted it. He _wanted_ it.

For someone who had passed years only staring, being allowed to touch was too much. Not only allowed: required.

On the court, Tooru was acting like any other day. He didn’t seem nervous or distracted, and his movements were as elegant as always. Long pale fingers, thin but strong wrists that Hajime wanted to catch and restrain against the ground. Hajime had heard Tooru’s frantic breathing so many times at games that he could recall exactly how it would sound below him.

«Stop», Hajime said to himself. «Stop right now. We’re in the middle of practice». As if his body would ever obey him.

The cold spells would protect them from the piercing winter of Sendai and the remnants of the last snowfall had disappeared thanks to them. The gelid air of February wouldn’t touch them without turning into summer breeze and the shivers wouldn’t mean anything but—

«Stop _planning._ »

But even when the image of his own hands all over Tooru’s body was an overused trope for Hajime, the milk and the blood and the woods were something new for him. Because the woods wouldn’t have paired them together if there wasn’t at least a bit of lust under their friendship, right? So there was also a tiny, minuscule possibility of Tooru actually _enjoying_ the Hunt. And the Courting, if Hajime did it right.

But there was something else, something that parted from that trail of thoughts and slowly turned into a fantasy. Because, what if…? What if Tooru let him touch him? What if he really let him put his fingers inside and kiss him and…?

His whole body recoiled at the thought, almost trembling, with his throat dry and a hideous moan he didn’t let out. 

“Iwa-chan, are you okay?”

He looked up at Tooru’s deep frowning. At that moment, Hajime felt a sweat drop sliding down his nape. And something else, too, but that was easier and, at the same time, harder to hide.

“Sure. Why?” he said, shrugging and starting running around the court like the rest of the team.

Tooru didn’t get to answer. Hajime sighed.

The rest of the day was torture.

Hajime was a collected man most of the time, but there were three things that made him lose control, in a violent or a miserable way: losing a game, Tooru being too arrogant and Tooru being too self-destructive. And that’s why he never had imagined that he’d find another nerve-wracking thing at twenty-five years old.

It had to do with Tooru, of course, and with the fact that Hajime couldn’t stop thinking about the skin under the clothes, but it got worse when he started to receive messages. They were from the other witches, friends that wanted to tease him or (but why?) congratulate him. Tooru received some of them, too, and he showed them to Hajime with a smile on his lips and a laugh inside his long, pale throat. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Tooru was enjoying all the attention.

“They really thought I was gonna be matched with Ushijima”, said Tooru, voice half horror half awe, looking at his phone screen.

“Well, you both are really strong at fertility magic and you can’t stand each other… I’m also surprised He didn’t go that way. The woods like gossip, after all”

“The fact that plants grow around us doesn’t mean _something else_ can grow too.”

“Oikawa”, Hajime chuckled, but the sound came out soft.

And choked. Because he remembered how Ushijima had been just there, just at the next spot. The woods had made clear He had been thinking about matching them, but changed His mind at the last second. The image of Ushijima and Tooru together wasn’t as disgusting as it was acid, in his mind Ushijima’s colossal body over Tooru’s graceful one. His stomach twisted. For the first time, Hajime was glad to have been paired with Tooru. He hadn’t stopped to think until now that, if Tooru hadn’t been matched with him, he would be paired with another witch.

And he was used to Tooru being with other people, but not to having so clear in mind exactly what he was going to do with that person and when.

“What? It’s true!”

Hajime laughed again. They took the train back to Sendai, leaving behind the tiny but expensive flat they shared and, even if the ride was long, Tooru got them to talk about anything but the Lupercalia. He thanked the distraction with lips sealed in a tight line. Hajime received a “Lucky boy!” message, Tooru a “Will you volunteer again next year?” one. Sometimes he forgot that most witches loved to stick their noses in everyone’s business.

Tooru’s home was just a few blocks before Hajime’s, so they parted ways there. It was already dark, but the Courting didn’t start till half-past eleven, so they had time to eat something and rest a bit before Hajime had to pick him up again.

“Want me to drive?”, Hajime asked, pointing with his jaw to the old car parked at the end of the road.

Tooru narrowed his eyes, thinking about it.

“Hmm… yes. I hate driving in early mornings, especially if I haven’t slept well.”

He clicked his tongue, suddenly nervous.

“We don’t need to stay awake all night, you know?”

“Oh,” Tooru answered, waving a hand. “I know it’s not a requisite, but I also know I’m not gonna… well.” _Be comfortable enough,_ that was how he wanted to end the sentence, Hajime knew it. But, instead: “I know it’s gonna be too cold to sleep.”

“Then take more blankets, dumbass.”

“Hey! That’s not… You know we have to keep…”

“Shut up, Oikawa.”

Tooru stuck his tongue out at him as if they were five years old again (and, sometimes, they acted like they were).

“So”, Hajime talked again: “I’ll pick you up by eleven o’clock. And _be ready,_ I don’t want to wait for you.”

His friend laughed, theatrically raising a hand to his forehead, an affected pose:

“I would never…!” he cried.

Hajime tried to frown but laughed instead.

“By the way…” Tooru hummed. “What do you think about matching clothes? Would it be too much? What color are you wearing to the Courting?”

“No.”

“ _No_ meaning I don’t mind or _no_ meaning I’d kill you.”

“The second one.”

“You’re boring, Iwa-chan.”

“Not as boring as you’re annoying”, he answered, eyes-rolling. “C’mon, get inside and leave me alone.”

Tooru pouted, but then smiled and obeyed, taking out his home keys from his pocket. Hajime said goodbye with a nod and started to walk to his own house. 

He was starting to hate it. The feeling of being inside a romcom, a fake dating story where not only they both knew all of it was false, but also everyone else. Their families, the coven, the woods, everyone knew.

The shortest of the fantasies for the shortest of the months.

Three days of acting like they wanted to do that for the rest of their lives. “Acting”. At least Tooru would have fun. But Hajime? Well, he’d try to forget everything just after its ending before the memories ended him first.

Tooru was one of those people that took really long to get in the shower (pure laziness) but, once inside, took even longer to get out.

When he was ten years old he would spend hours inside, thinking about volley, about victory, about everything and anything at the same time, and his mother had to threaten him with no volleyball for a month for him to finally get out.

Today his mother wouldn’t have the heart to threaten him, so he was there, already fully clean but still under the hot water.

On his right hand, a razor blade.

Ok, so this was happening. Or, at least, this _could_ happen. How far, he didn’t know, but he better be ready for it. «Pretty for it», Tooru corrected himself, and the word sounded so cringe in his head he wrinkled his nose.

But was he taking this too far? They’ve been friends for the longest time; there was no need for ceremonies or for putting on a show. Besides, he _knew_ Hajime was going to treat it like it was: just two friends matched at the Lupercalia trying to navigate it as peacefully as possible. So it would be weird for Tooru to try and look better for it, wasn’t it? Or, considering that he already did it with any date he had, could be offensive for Hajime that he didn’t do the same for him?

«Oh, wait. I’m overthinking. »

Being aware of that didn’t mean he could stop doing it. So half of his mind shouted «Tooru, for fuck’s sake, he won’t even notice if you shaved or not» and the other half «but what if he does? ». And there’s was a tiny, third voice, that murmured «you’d be his first. He’d always be comparing after this. Do you want to be lazy on this too? ».

That one was the worst.

“Knock, knock!” his sister shouted like a maniac at the other side of the bathroom door. “I want to shower too! C’mon, lover boy, what are you doing in there!?”

Tooru _groaned._

“Leave me alone!”

“You’re using all the hot water for nothing, tonight is for the abstinence! It’s tomorrow when…!”

“Shut up! Stop bullying me!”

But his sister laughed louder, like a fucking hyena, and he clicked his tongue and turned the shower off. For a moment he stayed there, a chill sliding down his spine, wanting to get out but also wanting to curl up on the bathtub and stay the whole night hiding there.

“Hey, Tooru”, his sister’s voice now sounded soft. “Are you ok?”

“Yes, don’t worry.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

Silence. He thought about it, but he didn’t… he didn’t even know what was what he wanted to say. She didn’t push him, either, and Tooru thanked her for that.

“What do you want for dinner?”

“There’s gonna be food up there…”

She laughed. This time, it wasn’t a mean one. It was a sisterly one. His favorite.

“Yeah, figs and oysters. What a feast.”

“I like figs. They’re sweet”

“What do you want for dinner?”, she repeated, sharper this time.

Tooru smiled and started to get out of the shower.

“Well, if you’re so eager to cook…”

The longest of the sighs went through the door and he laughed.

“I knew you were gonna go with gray, Iwa-chan.”

“Then why didn’t you wear gray, too?”

“Didn’t want you to know how well I know you.”

“But you are telling me now.”

“I can’t resist being right.”

Hajime parked in the same spot that the night before, right beside Ushijima’s family car. Tooru had been kind and had talked nonsense all the way up to the mountain, about his international plans for his setter career, about Kageyama’s nose bleeding at his game last week, about the Valentine’s letters he had received and the chocolates that had accompanied them. Tooru himself smelt like chocolate and cream and Hajime knew those sweets were the only dinner Tooru had been able to stomach.

And that’s why he didn’t tell him to wait for him when his car stopped humming. Tooru got out faster than the speed of light, waving at someone and… yes, now Hajime didn’t know where he’d gone. Maybe he was talking with that pretty girl, the one that had tried to cheat at the Matching. Maybe they’ll have a date, after the Hunt. Or even between this night and tomorrow. That didn’t sound like something Tooru would do, though, but his mind wasn’t let him have a quiet day. He was already so tired only by thinking and thinking…

«Please, let this be over soon. »

The woods didn’t answer. They just looked back at him, the cold spells hanging from their branches and the humid February air making them move like they were trying to cheer him up.

“Don’t try to play innocent now”, he said to them. “This is your fault.”

He could swear one of the trees _shrugged._

“Saying your thanks to Him?”, asked a girl’s voice beside him.

He turned to the sound, almost bumping to the pretty witch that had been following Tooru around since her coven was welcomed to Sendai’s Lupercalia, three years ago. She was as pretty as Tooru, enough to make faces turn to stare and whispers rise in her path. Made for each other, if someone dared to ask him.

He couldn’t answer before she gave him one of the anointment baskets. It smelled like roses, honey and fruits, the fragrance coming from under the fluffy blankets that covered the jars and flowers. Hajime took it, nodding in quiet gratitude. He didn’t answer her previous question.

“What a lucky guy”, she insisted. “But do you know the use of any of the things inside, apart from the milk and the blood, Iwaizumi?”

He used all his self-control to not to click his tongue. Her voice tone wasn’t exactly sharp, and yet he felt questioned. Everyone knew this was his first Lupercalia, but that didn’t mean he was completely ignorant about the ritual.

“Enlighten me”, he said, even so, rolling his eyes, and she laughed.

It didn’t sound like a sarcastic laugh.

“As you already know, milk and blood are for the purification”, the witch started to explain, lips full and painted in a red shade so dark it looked almost black in the night. “Oysters are for fertility, figs for virility.”

«Tooru like figs», he thought, remembering his friend saying something about them in the car. He hadn’t been listening.

“I knew that. What about the cherries?”, he asked, after pushing part of the blanket aside to take a quick look at the basket. “I don’t r…”

She laughed again. Hajime wished she weren’t so like Tooru. He felt as if it was Tooru himself the one laughing at him.

“Cherries? Cherries are for popping.”

His shoulders tensed and his teeth clenched. «Don’t turn red», he ordered to his own face, but it didn’t work.

“Well,” Hajime cleared his throat. “Then I don’t think we’re gonna need them. Not tonight, not tomorrow.”

Hajime expected her to laugh, to tease him even more, but the thing that happened next was her face suddenly softening as if she knew how uncomfortable he was right now.

“Wanna trade?”

“What?”

“You and I, we can trade matches, if you want.”

He frowned.

“You can… do that?”

The witch shrugged in a movement so odd it remembered him to the woods behind her.

“It’s a hunt, Iwaizumi. Sometimes you go after a fox and end up with a deer. A whole meal.”

Silence. She waited.

“Why are you doing this?” Hajime finally answered. “You don’t need to switch anything with me. Oikawa already likes you, just text him the day after tomorrow morning and you’ll have your… date.”

Hajime wasn’t going to say _date,_ not exactly. And, even if it was what he was expecting, the witch didn’t bite. She smiled. A smile soft and piercing at the same time:

“Look, I’m not the bad witch here. We can almost smell you both.”

“Wh…?”

“But it’s ok if you don’t want to do it like this, under pressure. No one would like that. So we’re giving you a way out if you both want to take it.”

He frowned. He wasn’t sure he understood.

“Thank… you? But I don’t think…”

She _tapped_ him on the shoulder.

“I know, I know. I wouldn’t miss the opportunity, either,” and then she giggled. She sounded happy. Happy? Hajime wouldn’t know. Witches from the south were so strange… “Be sure to do anything I would do.”

That made him laugh.

“But I don’t know you.”

“Oh, but I’m sure that by now you know exactly what I would do.”

“Maybe.”

The witch winked at him and turned back, returning to her match’s side. The guy took the anointment basket from her hands, took a cherry while no one was looking and ate it. Hajime could hear her laugh from there, her eyes looking around to make sure no one had caught them. It was forbidden to eat anything from the basket before the Courting began, but Hajime had started to understand that rules, in the Lupercalia, didn’t mean much.

“Iwa-chan, right here!”

He followed the sound of Tooru’s voice until he finally saw him at the edge of the group. The first row before a few adult witches masked like the previous night. They were carrying a goat with them and the group sighed when they made the animal jump to the small wooden altar. Hajime felt a shiver running down his spine when he realized it was happening, Tooru at his side with his teeth gnawing at his bottom lip. As if Hajime needed more reasons not to stare. Maybe he could bite it, too, tomorrow night, after or before kissing him. Maybe he could also sink his teeth into Tooru’s throat, ear, shoulders, everywhere he’d wanted for years. Or maybe they’d just stare at each other, wishing for the night to be over now, now, now, the clock ticking and trying to decide which one of them would finish on the other thighs.

But first, it came the Courting, and they were safe.

As safe as being naked and touching each other could be.

The Lupercalia was called the festival of the wolves because it had started with a she-wolf. Not any she-wolf, of course: the one who suckled the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. The Lupercal was the name of the cave where this famous event supposedly took place, located beside a fig tree. So the figs and the milk were symbols of fertility, while the rest of the things inside the anointment baskets were just symbols of passion (or jokes, if we’re talking about the cherries).

However, the blood wasn’t a symbol, as it came from a sacrifice: it was a promise.

So they stood there, in silence, while the masked witches sacrificed the goat. They did it fast, and as gentle as a killing can be (Tooru thanked them for that), and, one by one, the Lupercalian couples took a step forward to fill their glass jars with the fresh blood that soon will end up on their skin. Tooru looked at the almost black liquid while Hajime screwed the lid, his fingers already dipped in red. Everything smelled sweet and rusty at the same time, and it was Tooru the one who took the wooden cloths that one of the masked witches gave him for the two of them.

“You shall go into the woods and re-enact the Courting”, the witch said to them in a whisper that sounded like a hiss. Tooru recognized his sister’s voice in the words, but he wasn’t sure if it was hers. “Disrobe and anoint yourselves with this fresh blood and then smear it off with the whitest drop of milk.”

“Okay,” Tooru said, unsure about if he had to answer or not.

The witch giggled beside the gold and wood of their mask.

“Remember to do it with the wool you’d been given, the one made from the previous Lupercalian goat, and lie side by side with your wolf-mate under this blessed moon.”

He nodded. At his right, Hajime did it too. He could hear other whispers, other orders, all witches drinking from the expectation. Tooru felt his throat go dry as if he wanted to drink the milk and the blood and everything Hajime had to offer. He wondered if Hajime was thinking the same, if the tension in the air was affecting him too or if he was going to stay collected and quiet all night. Tooru knew the second option would be the best for him, but he also didn’t want to be the weak of the two.

“Abstinence is not required, but encouraged. You all know the limits. Don’t take what the woods wouldn’t give to you and remember to stay together the entire night.”

They nodded. Tooru swallowed. The blood was still warm inside the jar.

“Let the Courting begin.”

From the woods came a long, visceral howl, and they followed it.

They walked through the green and silver labyrinth that were the woods for an almost half-past hour until they found a place that wasn’t already occupied or too wide. The glade looked like a tiny dome of branches, cozy in its nature, and even so, there were enough fissures between the treetops for the moonlight to fall over them. The grass to their feet was soft and inviting, not a trace of green but completely silver, and Tooru murmured he had the feeling they’ll sink in it instead of lie on it.

But Hajime entered the glade and he didn’t sink.

«Of course», Tooru though, feeling stupid.

In shared silence, they began to prepare the place for the ritual. Hajime passed him the blankets and Tooru spread them on the ground, feeling on his fingers the odd warmth of the fabric. Ah. Another charm. They were supposed to stay naked and uncovered for the whole night, so he didn’t understand why all those blankets, but he won’t complain. Besides him, Hajime opened the basket and started to take out the glass jars that contained the milk and blood. There wasn’t enough blood to cover their entire bodies, only two tiny bottles (“There’s a limit of blood that a goat can give”, Hajime said, shrugging), but the jar with the milk was round and heavy.

Tooru wrinkled his nose.

“That’s gonna feel sticky.”

“Yeah.”

Then Hajime looked at him. Everything was at their place but they, and Tooru knew what that look meant. It meant it was time for them to undress, to start pouring the blood to their hands and their hands to each other’s bodies.

So they did it.

The Courting, like the Matching, was a dance. A silent dance made of zippers going down and buttons being unbuttoned and the sound of jackets and jeans and shirts sliding against skin. Hajime helped him with his shirt and Tooru did the same with Hajime’s jeans. One by one, Tooru took the clothes right from Hajime’s body and left them apart, taking special care into folding them the right way. Or maybe it was because, if he took his time folding, he gained a few precious seconds before having to go back to the tension that was building between them.

Hajime’s skin was tanned and softer than he had imagined it to be, and while his hands took away that gray shirt Tooru pleaded his own body to behave.

And Hajimeʼs fingers on the elastic band of his briefs. Tooru felt the touch of his calloused fingertips against hips, legs, ankles. _Behave._ Hajime pressed his lips shut in a thin line when it was Tooru’s turn to take off his underwear, the last piece of fabric left before they stood there, facing each other, naked. _Behave._ He felt more than saw how Hajime opened his lips to say something, and Tooru’s shoulders tensed, but he ended up turning to the jars. Tooru wished he had said what he wanted to say. What would it have been? For the way he had been looking at his body while undressing him, Tooru had hoped for a compliment. Or maybe something else. He’d have had enough just with a sigh. _Behave._

The blood was no longer that warm, and the sound that the lid made while being opened cracked the silence between them. Hajime extended his hands to him, like an offering, and Tooru turned over the jar to spill a little red into them.

Soon Hajime’s hands were on his neck, his shoulders, his forehead and cheekbones and lips. Tooru had to use all his self-control to not to open his mouth and lick the blood off Hajime’s fingers, eyes closing when Hajime slowly slide a thumb over his nose. Tooru heard him swallow. At least he was too nervous to feel entirely turned on. Not for so long, if Hajime kept tracing Tooru’s skin with the tip of his stained fingers, leaving red marks all over him. Not if the red path kept going down, down on him, crossing his chest and then his stomach and then his navel and then nothing. How long until Hajime realized Tooru was starting to get hard? Hajime put aside the empty jar and took the second one for him.

“My turn”, Tooru hummed, trying to hide everything behind a short giggle.

Blood wasn’t easy to spread. And it had started to take a jelly texture that felt wrong on his fingers. Each second that passed it turned darker and darker, and under the moonlight it seemed he was anointing him with petroleum instead of blood. Or with thick paint. Hajime didn’t close his eyes while Tooru emptied the bottle directly onto his throat. But he did roll them, maybe trying to stop a little smile or maybe thinking about the mess his friend was right now. The blood dried up faster than Tooru had though, so he hurried up and smeared it over his forehead and his cheekbones. He didn’t dare to stain his lips. He wasn’t sure if he could resist kissing him if they were as red and bright and humid as the rest of his neck.

“Ok, I’m done here”, Tooru said, throwing the jar aside like it was burning. “I think.”

“Yeah, well, you just spilled it all over me,” Hajime answered with a sharp smile and an arched eyebrow.

“Don’t complain, Iwa-chan, I know one or two witches who’d die for me to _spill_ all over them.”

Red on Hajime’s face again, but it wasn’t blood this time. Tooru should felt victorious for making him blush, but he felt filthy instead.

“You need to touch, Oikawa”, Hajime insisted, ignoring him. “I don’t bite, you know?”

_I wish you did._

“I’m not so sure about that.”

Tooru would have preferred if his voice didn’t crack three times in each word, but Hajime just shook his head and pointed to the whitest of the bottles around their feet.

This time, they did it together, the color white turning pink against their red-stained skin. This liquid was colder (so much colder), but Hajime’s hand warmed it more and more with each second passing, and there was again his touch against his skin. And Tooru knew this was part of the ritual, everyone was doing it right now, but at the same time, it felt different. It didn’t feel like a ritual, it felt like something they should have done years ago, when they were younger and more carefree and less rooted in their own friendship. When everything was easier and there were parties and alcohol more weekends than not and when Hajime said to him in a dark and empty room (and he had been so, so close) that he liked guys too. It felt like Hajime was touching him slower than the Lupercalia required, and Tooru could have sworn his hands stayed a second longer than they should over his nape, or over the curve of his ass, or over one of his nipples (Tooru bit his bottom lip so hard it caught Hajime’s attention). It was torture, and Tooru felt himself growing harder, and it didn’t help that his own hands were also navigating Hajime’s body at the same slow pace Hajime had set for the two of them.

And, however, they both stopped when it was the turn to smudge their lengths with the milk. There was no need to ask, they knew where the limits were, even if those turned more and more blurry with the pass of time. But Hajime’s left hand was still at his nape while Tooru spilled and smeared the last long drops of milk over himself and, _ah,_ that wasn’t helping. That wasn’t helping at all because now he wanted to jerk himself instead of just touch and spread some stupid milk for a stupid ritual. And Tooru didn’t want to look. Didn’t want to see the disgusted look on Hajime’s eyes when he realized how much Tooru was enjoying this. How much he wanted to kneel down right now and took him in his mouth. So he kept his eyes closed, face turned away, until Hajime step back and Tooru heard the clinks of the glass being discarded to the floor.

«Find something to say», he thought, almost panicked. «Something funny. We’re supposed to be laughing and having fun while doing this. We’re supposed to connect. »

“Do you think the milk was from the same goat?”, Tooru finally asked, eyes opening.

Hajime raised his eyebrows with the same half-smile as always. He didn’t seem uncomfortable, although he was still _so_ close to him.

“I hope not. It was male.”

Tooru snorted and Hajime’s smile grew, sincere and open. So he didn’t mind that his, oh my god, _childhood friend,_ were right in front of him, naked and half hard. Maybe he hadn't even looked down. Tooru hadn’t done it.

So they were looking at each other when the first moan reached their ears.

“Fuck”, Tooru hissed, tense, face turning to the direction the sound had come from. “I thought tonight was for the abstinence?”

It wasn’t the only lewd sound in the woods. And maybe they’d been too immersed in each other to even hear them, but now they could. Now they came from every direction, little whispers and _shh_ and whines and Hajime’s jaw clenched so hard Tooru though it was going to snap. The energy between them was suddenly awkward and something else (something more), and Tooru forced himself to sit down over the warm blankets to soak up the moon. Hajime did the same, right at his side, so close their arms and hips and legs were practically touching. For Tooru, it was almost painful; the whimpers on his ears mixing with that feathery touch, knowing he’ll have to lay there without doing anything _for hours._

Tooru could understand. He’d almost do it, too. He’d been in the edge of kissing Hajime too, of sliding his hand down and wrap his fingers around his, of whispering “let me do it” on his ear. Because of course the Courting was a night for the abstinence, but the limits were so, so unclear, and people touched and sucked and keep touching, doing everything they came up with except penetration. Not even with fingers or tongues.

But you can do a whole lot of things to someone apart of finger them.

A long, scandalous moan and Tooru rolled over his stomach to lie face down, biting back one of his own. The blanket was soft against his naked skin, and the cold charms were doing their job, but the reason a shiver came down his spine wasn’t for the cold. Because it was that, the thing that worked for him. The moans, the dirty talking, even the loud obnoxious cries and the surprised gasping and the names called in that desperate voice anyone made when he was so close to ending.

“Are you okay?”, Hajime asked, sounding kind of choked.

That didn’t help.

“The finest I could be considering that there are people who don’t know that today is the night of abstinence!” Tooru almost shouted at the forest, propping himself up on his elbows.

Hajime chuckled, low and familiar, and maybe that was a good sign. Tooru turned to him to keep on whining, but then he caught him staring. His eyes were following the line of his back and everything that came after. Tooru closed his mouth, quiet, and watched how Hajime clenched his fists and bit his bottom lip. Too much. Just then, Tooru realized Hajime was also half hard. And how could he not be, with what they had been made to eat and drink and with the sounds that surrounded them?

At that moment, another moan. Loud, so loud it almost sounded fake. But Tooru groaned either way, face hid behind his hands. Tooru could feel himself dripping to the blanket, and also Hajime staring back at him.

“So that’s your weak point?”, he asked. “Sounds?”

“Yes”, and his own voice sounded weak, almost defeated.

_Please, don’t say anything._

“Well”, started Hajime, clearing his throat. “You can… touch yourself, if you want? I don’t mind. I can look away.”

At least the moan that wanted to escape though his lips didn’t make it.

“You want me to touch myself in front of you.”

“That’s not at all what I said and you know it.”

“It doesn’t matter, I won’t. I’m gonna do this right.”

Silence again. Between them, not through the woods, of course. Ah, with the way his whole body was tensing, tomorrow until the last of his muscles were going to be sore. It was going to hurt. As if he needed more pressure for the Hunt. Sighing, Tooru rested his forehead against the blanket. The magic warm that came from the soft fabric caressed his skin and helped him to calm down for a few minutes. The rest of the pack of horny witches that were having the night of their lives also calmed down for a few minutes, but came back even louder. They both clicked their tongues at the same time and then laughed:

“Why people scream like they were being murdered?” Hajime groaned between those nervous giggles.

“Why don’t you ask your girls, Iwa-chan? Didn’t you like it hard?”

“Hey!”, was the answer, followed by a kick to his leg. Tooru whined and rolled over to escape his reach. “Shut up! You like it too!”

“Not like this, you brute!”

The suffering ended fifteen minutes after and it came with the longest and more exhausted sigh Tooru had ever let go. It was a sigh of relief. Smiling, Hajime turned over to take the basket and put it between them, both boys looking inside to see if there was something more interesting than the uncomfortable silence of the forest. There were bottles of water, petals of different flowers and the promised fruits.

“Ah, finally”, Tooru whispered, reaching for a fig.

The hours passed long and slow, they diving in and out of sleep. Hajime had though it was going to be harder for him to relax, naked and tense beside Tooru, but soon it was clear the years they had passed together weighted more than a random weird night. It was natural, the way their bodies recognized the presence of the other like a familiar place to be, thanks to a thousand, hundred, infinite sleepovers. Hajime lost the count of the times he closed his eyes that night and woke up hours or maybe minutes later, sometimes Tooru snoring, arms spread like he wanted to hold the whole night sky, sometimes he also trying to go back to sleep, nose scrunched in disgust. Between dream and reality, Hajime had time to wish they end up cuddling, but thanks (“thanks” wasn’t the word he would use) to the cold spells and the charmed blankets, there was no cold to fight.

One of the times Hajime woke up he found Tooru eating the last of the figs, and he looked at him from there. And, without even moving:

“You know figs are for virility, don’t you? How many of them do you need?”

Caught red-handed, Tooru made the funniest of the sounds, half offended half embarrassed.

“ _Me?_ Zero, of course! But I’m hungry…!”

Hajime propped himself up on his elbows with a giggle.

“Haven’t you had anything for dinner?”

The silence that followed that simple and innocent question said it all, but Tooru answered even so:

“I was nervous. Couldn’t swallow anything.”

Tooru was sitting cross-legged with his back to him, so Hajime couldn’t see his face, but the way he shrugged those broad shoulders made him think that Tooru looked like he could use a hug. Or maybe just a comforting hand on his arm. But Hajime didn’t move, even if he wanted to. Because he wanted to do it, of course, and also to dive his hands into his thick brown hair and to leave a kiss on his nape, the moonlight turning his column into a silvery staircase that Hajime’s lips wanted to descend step by step, vertebra to vertebra.

No, he didn’t move. So, instead, he said:

“C’mon, Oikawa, it’s just me. But… If you’re really uncomfortable, we could…”

“Nah”, Tooru cut him off, waving a hand. “Nervous is not uncomfortable. I’m never uncomfortable around you.”

Hajime cleared his throat.

“Glad to hear that.”

With a long sigh, Tooru laid down again, this time facing him, eyes closed and lips still glistering from the last fruit. He’d bet they’d taste sweet.

The last time Hajime woke up, right before sunrise, Tooru was already looking at him. The way his brown eyes were scrutinizing him made Hajime wish there were no Hunt, just another Courting. Just another night like this.

“Are we gonna try what my sister said?”, Tooru whispered, so low he almost missed it. Maybe he wanted him to miss it.

Hajime sighed and closed his eyes. It was hard to think about what he would answer if he really didn’t want to sleep with Tooru. And it was unfair, for Tooru himself. So he tried. He _really_ tried. But:

“I don’t know.”

And:

“We will know what to do, tomorrow night. We always do.”

Tooru smiled at him. Something in his stomach twisted.

“Yeah, you’re right. We always do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more to go!
> 
> Thank you for reading! Feel free to comment if you liked it 💚


	3. The Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And tonight Hajime felt like a violin string about to break, and he could swear Tooru felt like that, too. He thought about his own words. Yes, they’ll know what to do. They always did. That’s why, when some masked witch made the horn sound and the Lupercalian couples gathered around it, the apprehension Hajime had been feeling for three days straight suddenly turned into something else. Something that boiled in his insides like volcanic lava, something that hissed that _yes, you always have known what to do._

They slept a bit more on the train back to Tokyo. It was their last practice for the week and, being Saturday, they didn’t have classes after it, so when it finished they’d come back right to Sendai. Last Thursday Tooru had said to his parent he was thinking about skipping it (the train ticket wasn’t exactly cheap and the two hours long ride killed him), as he had been planning to spend that lovely Saturday morning with his match. He’d been thinking about having coffee with them in town (or at theirs), about getting to know each other even more after two nights together, meet them under the daylight. Get a friend out of this, like every other witch in Sendai.

But his Lupercalian match was already his friend, the best one, so Tooru forgot about skipping practice and now they were there again.

At the locker room, Tooru didn’t look at the gray t-shirt and gray sweats Hajime was discarding onto the bench. They hadn’t had time to change the clothes they’ve been wearing at the Courting, as they’d come to the gym directly from the woods. And Hajime and he will go back to the woods in a few hours.

Those few hours passed so fast Tooru couldn’t register them. And he was glad for that, glad for the volley to keep his mind shut and his (sore) body in movement. For two hours, Tooru set and run and laughed and everything was exactly the same as it had been three days before. For two hours, Hajime was just another teammate. Just his best friend. Not his match in some crazy ritual in which the nature itself wanted them to have sex, not the person he had been in love since he could remember, not the one the night before had had a hand on his hair and Tooru had wished Hajime would _pull_.

“You know,” Hajime said when the two hours had finished and with a water bottle close to his mouth. “Whatever happens tonight, I’m glad it was with you and not with… some random witch.”

Tooru knew Hajime was trying to say something important there. And he knew he had to answer something like “me too” or “weren’t you trying to fall in love?”, but his self-preservation instinct always came faster, harder, filthier:

“Aw, Iwa-chan! That’s cute.”

Hajime sighed and shook his head. Then he started to undress again and the spell the hours of practice had cast on Tooru broke. Suddenly his sore muscles remembered they hurt not because of the hard training, but because of a whole night in constant tension, twisting under any minimal sound or touch or thought. And Tooru’s mind going back again and again to Hajime’s hands all over his body while the real one chatted with their teammates, his tanned skin for everyone to see; and how his lips had formed the words “touch yourself” and how now his back disappeared behind a shower curtain and her sister saying “so someone has to finish on someone’s thighs”.

Pathetic, the way he had to hide inside the next shower, his legs trembling before and after letting the water fell. Pathetic, being so turned on just for the idea of Hajime coming on his thighs. Not even inside him, or because of him.It was twisted, but he was desperate; Tooru felt like he’d been edging for three days straight. He just needed to… Tooru just needed it to be over. He didn’t care anymore if it was with him begging or crying or losing any tiny scrap of pride left of him.

Hajime finished showering before him, and a few minutes later Tooru was already clothed at his side, they walking together to the train back to Sendai and Tooru shaking his head to soak Hajime with his damp hair. He barked at him and Tooru laughed. He tried to hit him and Tooru laughed even harder.

Acting was easy when the night was still so far.

“So,” Hajime said, the train leaving the station. “What are you gonna do now? Are you already going home or do you want to get something to eat first?”

“Mmm… I think I’m going home, Takeru’s at ours this weekend and… you know. Wanna come over?”

“Ah, no, no. I’ll cook something fast, then.”

“Sorry! I forgot your parents were working today! Then you better take something from my mother’s cooking or she’ll _rage._ ”

“I don’t wanna intrude…”

Tooru snorted.

“Intrude,” he repeated, eyes-rolling. “Iwa-chan, maybe I forgot, but I’m sure she didn’t. If you prefer to eat it at home it’s okay, but please don’t make me say to her you didn’t want to _intrude._ ”

Hajime looked at him, but Tooru didn’t look back. Finally, he grunted something any of them didn’t really understand, but it sounded like an “okay”.

Tooru’s mother was waiting for them. The whole house smelled like curry made with fresh milk and roasted lamb, and she invited him to come inside. Takeru was already setting the kitchen table, but Hajime bowed, apologized, and watched as the force of nature that was Tooru’s mother (that were the Oikawas) poured some curry into a lunch box for him. She hummed while doing it and Tooru smiled.

“I’ll pick you up at eleven o’clock, ok?”

Tooru shook his head and frowned, looking back at Hajime:

“Later, Iwa-chan! I have to shower and…”

“You already showered today,” he replied with a snort.

“Oh, were you watching or what?”

That sounded defensive, and Hajime frowned too. But then he remembered last night, Tooru’s shoulders so tense it looked almost painful, and didn’t answer.

“At half-past eleven, then.”

“Okay!”

“Okay.”

“Here it is, Hajime, darling. In the bag there’s also a fruit salad, I know you like it and Tooru asked me to set aside some of it for you, so…”

“Mum!”

Hajime smiled.

Tooru looking at his reflection in the mirror and his sister looking at him. It was half-past eleven and they were waiting for Hajime to appear.

“Any advice for tonight?”, he asked, without even turning to her.

She smiled, soft.

“Yes, one.”

“Which is?”

“Have fun.”

The energy that night was feral.

It wasn’t a surprise, and while Tooru and Hajime left his car behind they were welcomed by a pack of witches already howling, already smiling, but never touching. Of course, there were here and there a few intertwined hands, shared gazes and intimate (nervous, knowing) giggles, but no masked witch tried to silence them. Those sounds acted like wood for a fire slowly growing, fed not only with expectation but with the trust gained those last two nights. Around them, the woods moved, its branches brushing against each other in something very alike to a rhythm.

Tooru looked at him for a second, a glare too fast for Hajime to understand if there was something else behind it. However, he didn’t have time to worry about that, because then Tooru smiled at him, and it was a clear, sincere smile. Not the hideous (horrible) grimace Tooru spared when he felt cornered and forced to lie. It calmed him. He hadn’t been aware until now of how tensed were his shoulders, so Hajime smiled him back. Hajime also wished he could extend his hand and took Tooru's, because maybe it would be a good start for the Hunt. But he didn’t do it. Instead, they kept walking, mixing with the other couples and eating the red fruits that the masked witches were offering.

“More figs, of course”, Tooru said, taking two in each hand, and Hajime was about to laugh when he remembered how shiny had been Tooru’s lips the night before.

And, after that memory, the others came too.

His whole body reacted to them, his muscles straightening and his throat tightening. Hajime had forgotten how sore he’d felt, but not the control he’d had to maintain on himself next to Tooru, his friend trying to hide his panting and his swollen cock and the tiny line of precum connecting him to the blanket. Tooru’s entire body trying not to move but failing, wriggling in discomfort, and how Hajime had had to clench his teeth and fists just to not to cross that ridiculous distance between them both and… And his head a mix of “oh, god” and “please, let me touch you”, “please, let me do something more than just looking”.

But Hajime hadn’t done anything apart from wishing and suffering, and that was okay. There was no need to make things weird (even weirder).

And tonight he felt like a violin string about to break, and he could swear Tooru felt like that, too. Hajime thought about his own words. Yes, they’ll know what to do. They always did. That’s why, when some masked witch made the horn sound and the Lupercalian couples gathered around it, the apprehension he had been feeling for three days straight suddenly turned into something else. Something that boiled in his insides like volcanic lava, something that hissed that _yes, you always have known what to do._ Because they knew, they knew.

At his side, Tooru swallowed.

“The moon isn’t full tonight,” started one of the masked witches, her sisters moving through the couples to line them up. “It’s not a good sign, so you will have to make up for it.”

They nodded, but the pressure wasn’t as hard as if had been if it had been a new moon. Hajime’s parents had fallen in love in a moonless Lupercalia, the worst of the fates, but they turned out just fine. Half-moon? After last week's supermoon? They’ll be fine. There was enough moonlight for them to soak on it, for the Lupercalia to end on a great note. For the ancient enchantments that covered the whole region to be renewed again, stronger and stronger with each sigh.

“The outcome of the Lupercalia shall determine the year ahead. Don’t be lazy.”

A few laughs. A masked witch stopped right beside them and Tooru let out a sound that didn’t sound human. Not exactly. On her palm, a flat rock, rounded like a coin and just as bright. She said to them:

“Tonight we hunt and are hunted. Red is for wolves, white is for preys. Which one are you, Iwaizumi Hajime?”

“I… don’t know.”

“Tooru Oikawa. Which one are you?”

“You tell me.”

Tooru looked at him with a crooked smile. No one said anything for a few seconds, and then he could feel the witch also smiling behind her mask.

“So let Him decide this too.”

And when the witch threw the rock in the air Hajime gasped, following it with his eyes and wishing (pleading) for the woods to let him be the wolf. He felt Tooru’s gaze on him, vicious and wild like the first howls that surrounded them. Hajime hadn’t stopped to think before how he wanted their Hunt to go. If he wanted to chase Tooru through the woods until one of them surrendered or until Hajime caught him first. If he wanted to be the prey and let Tooru press him against a tree or a rock and felt his mouth on his dick.

But now he knew, he knew. He wanted the color red and he wanted Tooru under his body.

The rock fell on the witch palm and they waited for the verdict.

“Iwaizumi Hajime, you’re a wolf. Oikawa Tooru, you’re the prey.”

“Not for long”, Tooru _purred,_ donning a shit-eating grin.

And, at that moment, the masked witch went on his way and the nearer Lupercalian couple approached them, each of them with a pot of red and white paint. Hajime couldn’t keep his eyes away from Tooru, not when the hand of the witch was drawing on his skin the snowy lines that identified him with the prey. They looked good on him, almost elegant (beautiful). And Hajime had seen too many times the rough and violent red design of the wolves to know how they looked on himself.

The silence between them already felt like a hunt, even if none of them were running. Tooru’s smile was twisting and twisting with each second passed.

“Keep that smile to yourself,” Hajime said, voice husky. “I’m faster.”

“You sound victorious,” Tooru answered, his so low it almost sounded like a threat. “Eager, Iwa-chan?”

“So what if I am?”

The little gasp that followed that was even better than any moan Hajime had imagined. And it turned again into a smirk, dark and long and _oh,_ the things it did to his body.

“But you have to catch me first.”

When the couple finished with their drawings, Hajime and Tooru took their pots and turned to the couple at their left, repeating the ritual. Hajime felt his hands rigid and internally apologized for the design he was leaving on that wolf-witch. He felt even more rigid when another masked witch swapped the pot of red paint on his hand with the tiniest of the glass bottles. It was round and, its content, clear and glossy.

It took him one, two, three seconds to identify what it was.

And then Hajime looked at Tooru and he was ready to run, back straight and proud, his jaw up to the night sky. He looked beautiful (breath-taking), the white lines on his already pale skin turning him into something else. He looked daring and bold, nothing like a prey. He looked like the moon. Hajime clenched his teeth, trying with all his might not to catch him already, not to reach up and bury his fingers in Tooru’s hair, the perfect length for him to get a good handful and _pull._

Right there, no need togo into the woods. He’d fuck him right there.

The horn howled and Tooru _winked at him_ before turning around and run.

Hajime didn’t wait too long to start running after him, too, following the glint of the white paint, white skin, white shirt. A thought came and went, one that said that maybe Tooru had chosen his clothes so clear because he’d wanted to be found. Because he also had wanted to run through the woods knowing Hajime was following him, teasing him with the long distance between them but never letting him lose his trail.

The low branches of the trees impacted against Hajime’s face, arms, torso, the moon showing him the path with silver rays. He could hear around him the growls and cries of the witches already being caught, and how those screams turned into moans and laughs. He could hear other wolves running through the undergrowth, their pants and barks, and also his own agitated breath, rusty and fierce: desperate.

Hajime would like not to be so immersed in the game, but he knew all this ritual was meant for them to lose control. For him to want nothing else but run, catch Tooru and pin him against any surface until dawn.

And it was working.

A flash of silver and his muscles moved on its own towards it, sprinting and slamming his body against Tooru’s. He crashed against a tree so huge and crusty Hajime almost felt the impact on his own, but he didn’t let Tooru go, in his ears still ringing the high groan of pain (and of something else) that had left his lips. Finally his hand harshly tugging on Tooru’s hair and his own body pushing his against the tree. And there it was, his throat a perfect curve, long and exposed like an offering for his teeth to sink in. So that was what he did.

Tooru gasped again, a febrile sound that forced Hajime to grind his so, so obvious erection against the curve of his ass. The moan left Tooru’s mouth open and wanting, and Hajime wanted to kiss it and bite it and that’s why he didn’t expect the hard blow that knocked him down.

“Not so easy.”

That grin again and Tooru left the spot with a mischievous giggle.

Hajime was lucky to be not only a strong man, but also used to the blows and falls that came with sports. He had never forgotten that Tooru had immense force; he only hadn’t expected to be at the other end of his rage. But this wasn’t rage. Quite the opposite.

His jaw hurt when Hajime started to chase him again, but it was a kind of pain that went right to his groin. So that wasn’t pain, either. Quite the opposite.

After that, Tooru couldn’t stand a chance.

Because Hajime had lied before: he wasn’t faster than Tooru. But he was sturdier, and more resilient, and where Tooru’s body was almost designed to sprint and move to the speed of light, his was trained to last. To keep moving at the same pace until no one else was. And the white trail that was Tooru was so, so easy to follow.

And it was there, just right before his hands.

He didn’t even have the need to sprint, because, at that moment, Tooru tripped.

Hajime was all over him even before Tooru’s back hit the ground, his hands catching his strong but thin wrists and pinning them against soft and green grass. The cry was half pained half aroused, and it transformed into a sigh when Tooru’s legs surrounded Hajime’s hips in a move that couldn’t hide anything from him. Tooru arched his back; Hajime rutted his still-clothed erection into Tooru’s with a growl so animal it sounded like the moan it actually was.

Hajime stopped for a moment just to look at him. Below his body, Tooru stared at him with hazy, dark eyes.

“So you got me, Iwa-chan. And now what?”

“Now I fuck you.”

Tooru moaned and Hajime kissed him, mouth wide open and hot. Hajime hardened his grip on his wrists even more now that he was finally kissing him, that he had him where he had wanted him for so, so long. Tooru also kissed him like he had wanted him for so, so long. Hungry and feral. Tooru’s teeth sinking into his bottom lip, drawing a low groan from the back of Hajime’s throat.

_This is happening,_ said a panicked voice somewhere in his brain. _Shut the fuck up,_ answered another, with a vicious tone that went with how Hajime’s body was moving against Tooru’s right now. It had the same rhythm as his panting, the same dizzy eco of Hajime tugging Tooru’s shirt up with just one hand to reveal more and more skin, dragging the tip of his fingers over the taut stomach of the boy trapped under him.

And then everything transformed into flashes, static images of Hajime’s tongue following the path that his own hands had traced in the Courting. Hajime first licked his lips, swollen and red, perfect, and the sigh that left them. Then he moved to his neck (arched and infinite), tasting the faint savor of Tooru’s sweat and cologne, and he left the path for a second just to bite at his earlobe. Tooru chose that moment to slide against him _just right_ , and a shaky moan escaped through Hajime’s lips, falling right into his ear.

Under him, Tooru’s body tensed, hard. And Hajime remembered.

“Fuck,” Tooru swore, sounding almost chocked.

“Fuck what?”, he teased, keeping his voice low, grazing his earlobe with his lips and making sure each word sounded as on the edge as he felt.

Tooru didn’t answer with words but with a long whine, throwing his head back into the grass, like trying to escape from his lips. And Hajime wanted to keep teasing, keep breathing and moaning into his ear until Toorusnapped (until Tooru came undone), but he was weak, too weak, and couldn’t ignore the line of his exposed throat.

Hajime felt dizzy, out and in absolute control at the same time, and Tooru kept panting under his lips and teeth, moaning out loud when Hajime bit at one of his nipples. On the Courting, Hajime had touched them a second too long and had been afraid that Tooru had noticed it, and now he was sucking at them, biting, licking. How? How could he taste so right, sound so right, move so right? Right like every wet dream Hajime had had about him.

Tooru finally freed himself from Hajime’s grip and he let him go.

The first thing he did was cradle his face between his hands, a gesture that would have been sweet if it hadn’t been followed by this kind of kiss. Tooru rolled his tongue into Hajime’s mouth and then sucked on his bottom lip again, both of them too drunk on each other, or maybe too drunk on the Lupercalian zenith, to stop and think and… But that was okay. That was the whole point. And none of them wanted delicacy.

Hajime’s hips grinded down onto Tooru’s erection one, two, three times, and Tooru arched again ( _ah—_ ), hissing through his teeth and tightening his grip on Hajime’s jaw. There was no rhythm, only instinct, only their bodies trying to find a way to connect even deeper. Teasing the hot skin under his fingertips, Hajime let his hands slide down at Tooru’s sides until they reach the hem of his jeans. The air was suddenly cold between them when Hajime leaned back and started to unbuckle his belt, the metallic echo too loud in the night, and then the jean’s button, and then his fingers were again on the edge of Tooru’s jeans and Hajime looked at him, waiting for… But there was no answer, only Tooru’s hands leaving his jaw and reaching down to drag his sports pants down. Okay, so there was no doubt: Tooru wanted this too. _Tooru wants this too._

For a moment, Hajime was tempted to slow down, to take off his jeans with the reverence it deserved before taking his cock is his mouth. Because he wanted to blow him, to take him apart bit by bit until Tooru was begging him to fuck him, Hajime too conscious of the tiny bottle of lube inside his pocket. And when Tooru reached up to help him take off his shirt and Hajime helped him with his own the feeling intensified, a desperate need to make this last longer. After all, it was a one-time thing. The woods never repeated His matches and Hajime wasn’t brave enough to ask Tooru for an encore. So everything left undone would remain like that.

But.

There was always a “but”.

And, this time, the “but” was that this was the Lupercalia, and Tooru wasn’t having sex with Hajime because he liked him. Asking for more was out of the line. So Hajime would thank each kiss and each sigh and everything that Tooru let him do to him, like in that exact moment, Tooru letting out a _Hajime_ so tiny it was almost inaudible.

Hajime kissed him again, moaning against his lips when he felt Tooru’s palm touching him through the fabric of his boxers. His tongue traced the straight line of his teeth, and his lips, and sucked Tooru’s tongue while he took the lube, that had fallen out of his pocket. Then he pulled back again and Tooru’s gaze fell on the bottle in his hand.

“ _Yes._ ”

He was going to _lose it_. Hajime groaned hungrily, head falling forward at the answer, his forehead resting against the side of Tooru’s.

“Fuck, Oikawa.”

Tooru had the nerve to laugh. A short one, half giggle half moan, which made Hajime even eager. He clenched his teeth, the question bursting through them:

“How do you want it?”

An arched eyebrow and a long, long smile.

“Well, you’re the wolf.”

“I know, but…”

“I made myself clear enough, Hajime.”

Hajime nodded before kissing him again. They wriggled out of their remained clothes, helping each other, leaving quick kisses here and there, Hajime thanking every cold charm surrounding them. Tooru whispered something like that out loud, too, and Hajime laughed, lips now so close to his navel. He pressed a soft kiss there, and another one into his left hip. And, when Tooru spread his legs for him, teeth diving into his own bottom lip to bit back a moan, Hajime also kissed the inside of his thighs. Tooru’s cock was swollen and hard, a tiny bead of precum slowly sliding over the head. The urge to suck at it was almost painful, but Hajime managed to stand still.

“Okay, so…”, Hajime started saying, voice hoarse with desire. “I’m gonna…”

Tooru propped himself up on the elbows, looking at him with eyes so dark they seemed black. There was something else in that stare, something that Hajime couldn’t make out.

“What?”, Hajime asked, even so.

_Tell me to suck you off._ Tooru reached out, caressing his face with a hand and touching Hajime’s bottom lip with his thumb. Hajime opened his mouth, waiting for him to put it inside. _Tell me I can blow you._ He wanted to suck his thumb first and then his dick.

“Nothing.”

Silence.

Hajime conceded him two more seconds to change his mind, but Tooru stayed quiet, looking right at him.

The slick sound of the lube being opened filled the silence, and before staining his fingers with it Hajime put his free hand on Tooru’s chest and pushed him until he let his elbows slide out and flopped onto his back. Then he hovered over him, Tooru’s arms now around his neck to hold him close, and his legs also around Hajime’s, and then they were kissing again, Tooru claiming back the rhythm Hajime had left behind.

The lube was cold, but Hajime warmed it with his fingers before letting it touch Tooru’s skin. Despite the small bottle, the amount of lube was more than enough, and soon his fingers were slippery and glossy, spreading it all over Tooru’s length with long, firm strokes that made Tooru shiver. Soft moans reached his ears, too, Tooru’s breathing growing heavy under his hand, but not a single word.

Hajime pulled back a second just to pour a bit more lube into his other hand. His own cock was throbbing at the view, and Hajime couldn’t wait to slide into him, he’d do it right now if he could. And of course he was nervous. It was his first time with a guy, hands trembling in expectation and in need. Just like Tooru’s thighs. He wanted to do it right. No, not only right. He wanted to make it _good_ , for Tooru and for himself.

So when Hajime slip a finger in he did it slowly, shoulders tensed and throat tight. Tooru arched just with that small pressure and sighed, hips moving down to show him the rhythm he wanted. Hajime obeyed, following the ups and downs of Tooru’s hips and soon he was already sliding a second finger in, earning himself a long moan that had him panting too.

“Yes,” Tooru groaned again when Hajime scissored his fingers open while leaning forward to kiss him. The kiss was sloppy and desperate, just breaths against mouths and teeth diving into lips and (— _ah—)_ those lips, swollen of being kissed and bitten and shiny with saliva.

“Everything alright?”, Hajime asked (voice weak and low).

“Didn’t that yes give you a clue?”

It was his body who moved, pure instinct, pushing his fingers deeper and drawing a shaky groan from Tooru. Hajime looked at his faint smile and closed eyes, and waited just two more seconds before curling his fingers inside. The long _ah_ that abandoned Tooru’s lips collided against his, and Hajime had had enough. Enough. And he hoped Tooru was ready enough, too, because if Hajime had to stay just one minute longer with his fingers inside him and watching him arch and moan below his own body he was going to come before even having the chance to complete the Lupercalia.

Sighing, Hajime pulled his fingers out and Tooru let out a cry, his hands reaching over to tug at his short hair and pull him into a kiss that was more an order than a kiss. Tooru encircled Hajime's hips with his legs in a plea without words, showing him what he wanted now, now, now, and Hajime let himself be guided.

He drove into him slowly, feeling the slickness of the lube and also the way in which Tooru was stretching around him. It felt like a pulsing sensation, his own dick in the edge of hurting, and Tooru was so, so tight. His arms were trembling in an effort to not to let himself fall over Tooru, Tooru’s hands caressing them up and down while his lips mouthed at his left ear, encouraging him to keep going (to start fucking), moaning and breathing and whining. The sounds were too much, the tightness was too much.

And now Hajime was all the way in and he couldn’t move. He _couldn’t_ move.

“Hajime,” Tooru begged (because that was definitely a plea). “C’mon.”

“I’m on it”, he groaned, eyes shut. “Just give me a s—”

But Tooru didn’t give him anything. Tooru was the one that started to move, hips rolling against his, desperate for any kind of friction, Hajime growling in his ear, feeling how he was losing until the last bit of control he’d had inside.

Tooru gasped at the sound, and then again when Hajime leaned back just to slam back in, hard and brutal. Tooru’s nails at his back and his own teeth at his neck, as if they needed that flash of pain to ground their bodies to the grass. And maybe it was like that, each push growing harder and faster, just like Tooru’s moans, that sometimes formed his name and sometimes they were just a chain of _yes_ and unintelligible pleads.

“I knew you were like this,” Tooru whispered once.

“Like what?”

Like what he didn’t answer, and Hajime went deeper, deeper, until Tooru seemed to forget his own words, groaning again instead. Feeling his own hips losing rhythm, losing everything, Hajime’s head was a buzz of sounds and compulsions that traveled through his entire body. He couldn’t stop moving, stop thrusting, but he knew he had to. Or… Hajime was _so_ close. And he wasn’t the only one, judging from the harshly way Tooru was panting, legs and mouth wide open and one of his hands touching himself.

“Oikawa,” he called. “I’m gonna pull out now—”

“ _No_ ”, and it sounded like a threat. “I need to go to the lake, after…”

Hajime tried to get his thoughts in order, something quite difficult with Tooru holding him in place, glaring at him with something savage in the brown of his eyes.

“But— I don’t— If you don’t want to, it’s okay. We’re already—”

“But I want to,” he snarled, almost venomous.

He nodded. Tooru sighed.

A sound like a mewl after one more rough thrust let Hajime know he was doing well ( _Fuck, Hajime—_ ), but he didn’t know what he had done to earn that sound, he just knew he wanted to hear it again, and again, and again, so Hajime slid a hand down, wrapping his fingers around Tooru’s, forcing him to follow a new pace, faster and firmer, like an echo of Hajime’s thrusts.

And that was the end. Hajime didn’t need to wait much longer, just one, two, three strokes and then Tooru was coming, hot and white against his stomach, mixing with the other white lines that decorated his moonkissed skin. Only that image was enough for Hajime to follow after, coming deep inside of him.

Trying not to collapse on Tooru, Hajime curled over him while the volcanic lava that was his orgasm wandered through his body, making him tremble and sigh. Maybe it was because of the Lupercalian moon, or because of Tooru, but Hajime could have sworn it had been longer, more intense, than any other he’d had before. Then he pulled out and pressed close again right after, as close as he could get to Tooru. Hajime knew what the next step was (stand up, go to the lake, clean themselves, sleep, never touch again), but he wasn’t ready to take the first one. Because that first step would hopelessly lead to the last one: Never touch again.

Tooru sighed again, a full grin on his face:

“That was good.”

“Was it?” Hajime asked, voice low, finally giving up and lying by his side.

His friend rolled to face him, with messy hair and soft pants, that smile still illuminating his whole face. Hajime felt a knot in his stomach. Never touch again.

“Of course. That’s the point, isn’t it? The Lupercalia itself makes the sex good.”

Hajime arched an eyebrow:

“Are you saying it wouldn’t have been good if it weren’t for the Lupercalia?”

He should have kissed him longer. Tooru propped himself up on his elbows and looked at him from up there. His smile now was soft, gentle. The kind of smile he reserved for telling the truth.

“Relax, Iwa-chan. I’m sure you would have been amazing with or without magic.”

“I wasn’t worried about that,” he snorted, trying not to sound embarrassed but the red on his cheeks betraying him.

“Well, maybe we can discuss it further after taking that bath,” Tooru chuckled, starting to stand up but not before leaving a brief kiss on his lips. “Are you with me?”

“Y-yes.”

And Hajime stood up, confused and dizzy, his eyes never leaving the smile that Tooru’s lips formed.

“Don’t get dressed, Iwa-chan. No one does.”

“But what if the lake is too far away?”

“It’s not.”

“How do you know it?”

“Just listen to the woods. They’d been showing us the way all night long.”

“Ah… Oh, it’s true. My bad, I wasn’t listening.”

“Too distracted for that, huh?”

“Yes.”

Gleaming in the center of the lake stood a whole parade of cold charms, white and icy like an iceberg but with the uncanny light that came with the magic. Hajime and he walked at a slow pace until their feet touched the water, not cold enough to be uncomfortable but neither hot enough to invite them inside. The temperature reminded Tooru of that time he forgot he wanted to take a bath, the water losing its warm after an hour.

However, the rest of the pack was already there, some couples splashing around and others just sitting there, enjoying the calm. A few of them helped each other with the cleaning, hands and hair bubbling with soap. Tooru frowned:

“Why do they have _soap_?”

Besides him, Hajime laughed, and he turned over just to watch how his friend pointed to a group of wooden baskets. They were the anointment baskets from the Courting night, and they took one for themselves, but there was no soap in there. Only blankets and sweets.

“Why didn’t I thought of this?”, Tooru pouted, and Hajime rolled his eyes. “Why didn’t _you_ think of this?”

“Ah, is it now my fault?”

“Yes!”

But they left the basket apart and got in the lake together, feeling the warm water took away the sweat and everything else. Tooru submerged until his shoulders were underwater too, cleaning himself and trying not to look back to Hajime, who was doing the same. He’d felt sticky and dirty all the way to the lake, feeling it sliding down his thighs, so it was a relief to finally get rid of it. Sighing, he splashed around for a few minutes before coming back to Hajime’s side; already sat near the riverbank with the water hugging his shoulders.

“Iwa-chan…”

“Hey, Oikawa!”, a voice shouted behind him, and he turned to it. The voice belonged to a young woman from their coven, a witch with a smile always wide. She was accompanied by her match, a cute blonde girl that held something in her hand. “Did you two forget the shampoo?”

“It wasn’t part of the ritual”, answered Hajime, a sharp answer that tried to (and failed to) hide how embarrassed he was. Tooru didn’t know why. It was because there were naked bodies everywhere? Or because…?

“Ah, newbies…” she laughed, and then turned to say something to her match. She laughed, soft and caring, and then she threw them the thing he’d had in her hands. “Don’t thank me!”

Hajime caught it before it fell in the water, the two witches swimming away from them, still giggling. Tooru chuckled too when Hajime showed him a tiny bottle of shampoo, like the ones they both stole from hotels in their game trips.

“We’re so green at this, Iwa-chan…”

“Yeah…”

For a moment they just stood there, sitting underwater, observing their surroundings. Every couple was still kissing each other, and the atmosphere was quiet and… wholesome? Tooru felt as if they were under a dome, shielded by something much bigger than them. He knew it was the woods, that tried to help them forget that night will soon end, that the Lupercalia was ending, that they’ll soon come back to their normal lives. But he didn’t want to. Come back. He didn’t want to leave that lake, or the forest, or the way (for some reason) Hajime was looking at him.

“Do I have something in my face?”

“Are you okay?”

Tooru turned to look at him too:

“Me? Of course, why wouldn’t I?”

“Well…”

“Aw, Iwa-chan”, he teased him, with a giggle. “Don’t worry, I’m not in pain. Not the bad kind, though.”

“Glad to hear that”, Hajime answered, clearing his throat.

“And now gimme that bottle, I’m gonna wash my hair.”

Tooru reached over to take the shampoo from Hajime’s hands, but then he opened the lid and poured a bit into his palm:

“Wet your hair and turn over.”

“What?”

Hajime arched his eyebrows at him and pointed with the shampoo bottle to a couple of witches not so far away that were laughing while one of them washed the hair of the other. It was a cute image, and Tooru felt almost as if he was spying on them, so he looked away, again at Hajime:

“Will you try to drown me when I’m off guard?”

Rolling his eyes, Hajime laughed:

“That’s something you would do, not me.”

“True!”

“C’mon, Tooru.”

The name made him shiver, so he hurried to put his head underwater before surfacing again and turning his back to Hajime. There was something tingling at his stomach that made him feel more nervous than how he had felt right before the Hunt, and he knew it had to be not with the proximity (Hajime had been _inside_ of him) but with the intimacy. And maybe because of that, Tooru let out a sigh when Hajime’s fingers started touching his hair, caressing his scalp. Before he even knew it Tooru was humming at the touch, like a kitty cat purring around his owner. He could feel Hajime’s smile beside him, and after a few seconds he also felt him getting closer, closer.

“I’m falling asleep,” Tooru whispered, all might gone, and Hajime’s laugh was weak and soft.

“Too bad you have to get rid of the soap first.”

“Noo…”

But Hajime caressed his nape with slippery fingers and Tooru obeyed, leaning forward for his friend to wet his hair for him. He felt each millimeter of Hajime’s skin on him, from the way his hips touched with his own to the fingertips running through his locks. Eyes closed, Tooru wished that moment never ended.

Hajime left a brief kiss to his nape before drawing away.

Wait. What was happening?

Tooru felt his face grow hot and red, but didn’t say anything when Hajime passed him the shampoo bottle with a tense smile and a “your turn” that sounded chocked. And he complied, washing Hajime’s short hair with strokes as shocked as he felt inside. Because Tooru was used to Hajime taking care of him, and vice versa, but not to this extent. But he wasn’t going to complain, of course. He just kept touching his hair, enjoying those moments of peace and silence before the world started to spin again. It was almost magical, the way Hajime lowered his head for him to wash his hair, and he couldn’t resist touching his nape, too, and the line of his strong shoulders, broad and sunkissed.

When Tooru finished, Hajime pushed his head under the water and then turned to stare at him. Tooru’s breath halted for a second, holding his gaze, not knowing what to do, what to expect. That was out of the script. Tooru knew about the Matching, the Courting, the Hunt, he knew what to do in each one of those rituals, but he didn’t know about Washing Each Other’s Hair or Kissing After. Hell, he didn’t even move when Hajime came back to his side (they were touching from ankle to shoulder, god) and sighed, a little smile on his lips.

Tooru loved to see him like this. It was a rare sight that he’d only got to see in the mornings after hard games, as it was common for them to end up waking up on their flat couch, celebrating or mourning the night before. Hajime looked so relaxed. So happy.

Without thinking, Tooru extended a hand and touched his jaw, following the hard lines, the up and down of his Adam’s apple, the hollow of his collarbone. There was a slight hum at the back of Hajime’s throat while Tooru touched him, and Hajime closed his eyes before also reaching for Tooru, his right hand descending over one of Tooru’s leg.

“They’re so smooth,” Hajime whispered in his ear, and Tooru shivered, gathering enough courage to rest his head on Hajime’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to care, lightly running his palm over his thigh, knee, shin.

“Thank you.”

Tooru smiled. And to think that he’d spent hours trying to decide if he should shave or not… Worth it. The look on Hajime’s eyes while he kept touching him. Worth it.

“I’ve always wanted to feel them, but I…” Hajime cleared his throat. “I thought I’d make you uncomfortable.”

Tooru chuckled. Cute. As if Tooru hadn’t passed _months_ asking almost everyone to touch his legs every time he shaved them.

“Well, I can show you how to have them like this.”

“Hmm… I prefer to touch yours.”

Ah, Tooru hoped he won’t. He didn’t know if he could bear having him touching his legs at any moment without also touching under his pants. Hajime’s fingers traced a few circles over his knee before intertwining them with Tooru’s. _Please, what is happening?_

“You know,” hummed Hajime again, voice heavy with exhaustion. “This looks like… With everyone hanging here… It looks like the lake from The Lion King movie, the one Pumba went to drink.”

Tooru threw back his head and _laughed._

“Let’s get back to the glade. I’m falling asleep.”

“But I don’t wanna move…!”

“C’mon, don’t you want to put on some clothes? It’s starting to get cold.”

“No!”

“… not even eat something from the basket?”

“Hmm… What’s inside?”

“Come and see it for yourself.”

“Iwa-chan!”

The dawn caught them laced together again.

Tooru didn’t remember when or how it had started, but it did it with the feeling of Hajime’s lips on his neck, and then on his jaw, and then on his lips, legs tangled together and strong arms surrounding Tooru’s hips. He’d been in that place between dream and reality, warm and soft, Hajime waking him up with each touch. And he hadn’t been awake enough before turning to him and deepening the kiss, eyes still closed, night still over them.

But now the sun was there, bringing his light with him, and it turned everything into gold. Leaves left shadowy shapes on Hajime’s skin that moved all over his body with the wind, and they fit perfectly with the remains of red painting on his face and neck. His mouth was red, too, but it wasn’t for the painting but for the kissing; full of those little sounds that maybe he didn’t know he was making. Tooru could hear them. Hopefully, he was awake enough to get to remember them, after, when everything had ended. _Please, let me remember this. Just this._

Tooru brought himself up and down Hajime’s lap in that lazy rhythm that came with the doziness, too slow to even be called a rhythm but enough to set his insides on fire, volcanic lava dripping down his spine, right into his thighs. Fingers digging into shoulders and every time Tooru slammed his hips back down a new curse escaped through Hajime’s lips. Tooru wanted to close his eyes, he wanted to _just feel,_ but he couldn’t. Especially when Hajime opened his and stared right back at him.

Like this, there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to look but at the curve of his neck, or the way Hajime's hands grip his hips to thrust up into him, meeting him halfway, and the hitched breath that left his own throat. (“Right there, right _—ah—_ there”). Tooru was drowning in it, in the light and in the closeness and in Hajime, but some part of him was paralyzed with fear. Because, yes, like this there was nowhere to hide, and he was so, so afraid of Hajime noticing… noticing how pathetically in love Tooru was. Hajime was going to realize in one moment or another, in the next trust, in the next kiss, in the next shared look (consuming and blazing and _loving_ ).

The sun kept going up and they kept moving, now Hajime’s hand on his temple, a thumb over his bottom lip. Tooru kissed it, eyes closing again and the rhythm finally becoming a true rhythm, faster and desperate, while Hajime chased after him. But the more light there is fewer secrets can be kept well hidden, and Hajime chose that moment to put Tooru’s hand away from his cock ( _oh, no)_ and stroking it himself ( _he knows)._

Hajime came first, and it only took a few more messy thrusts until Tooru followed him with a curse between his teeth. Hajime’s hand stayed on his length for one, two, three seconds more, to help him through his orgasm, slowing his pace bit by bit until no one of them was moving.

Tooru conceded himself one last kiss before pulling out and flopping next to him over the blankets. He was already feeling Hajime’s cum all over that lush fabric, and over his inner thighs, but he didn’t mind, not at that moment. Not when Hajime kept breathing that hard, followed by a long ( _long_ ) sigh that Tooru wanted to carve in his memory.

They stayed there for a while, calming their breathing, before one of them reunited the courage to talk again. It was Tooru, of course:

“You know, I wasn’t lying last night… Well, before. You’ve been good.”

Hajime rolled over, looking at him with an arched eyebrow.

“You, complimenting me not once _but twice_? Wow, I better make a wish.”

“Shut up, Iwa-chan,” he laughed. “But don’t get cocky; remember this was all thanks to the Lupercalian moon.”

“What moon? The sun is already… Oh, I get it. So _you’re_ the one that isn’t this good normally.”

“What? _No!_ I’m always… I’m even better! I don’t need magic to excel at sex!”

Hajime’s smile was mischievous: a rare sight.

“How could I know?”

His tongue ran faster than his brain:

“Then try me another night and see it for yourself.”

Something flashed behind Hajime’s eyes, making his pupils grow wide, and Tooru stomach twisted. Ah, fuck. Ah, _fuck._

“Well…” Hajime started saying.

“It was a joke,” he cut him off. “You know I wouldn’t. I mean, _I would_ , of course. But I know you wouldn’t, so… Please, stop me; I don’t know what I’m saying.”

He laughed (at him, Tooru supposed), still propped up on his elbow. Tooru could swear Hajime was blushing.

“I would,” his friend said after a few seconds of mortifying silence.

“You would what?”

“I would… want to… see it for myself? I don’t remember what words you just used, sorry.”

Tooru opened his eyes wide and then Hajime cleared his throat, suddenly his face twisting in a horrified gesture:

“No, forget that, I’m sorry. I’m sleep deprived.”

“No, no, Iwa-chan….! I mean, yes! Those were the words. It was good, we can do it again. See who’s right. Even if we know I’m always right.”

Why did he keep talking? Why won’t Hajime kiss him already to shut him up? That would be the perfect end for that day, but then Hajime smiled, tender and kind, and his heart trembled. That was _definitely_ a mistake. Tooru was so in love that he couldn’t even do himself a favor and cut that from the beginning.

Fuck it! He’d keep ruining it till the end:

“I’m glad, too.”

“About what?”, asked Hajime, frowning.

“To have had this with you. I don’t think I could have done it with anyone else.”

“Then why did you present yourself?”

Tooru shouldn’t answer. Could he stop ruining life for his future self?

“Maybe I was trying to forget. Or falling in love, or out of love. Or all of them at the same time.”

Frowning, Hajime looked away, like trying to order those words in his mind to make sense of them. Good luck with that. In the end, he just said:

“I’m… sorry you got me instead?”

He laughed, cynical. Of course Hajime wouldn’t understand.

“Yeah, it looks bad for me. I fell for you even harder.”

Silence. And that was it: a great favor for a not so great future. It hadn’t slipped through his lips, it had been deliberate, almost liberating. Tooru took a deep breath, waiting for Hajime to kindly get them both out of this.

“Oikawa, what the fuck.”

_What?_

“What?”

Tooru got up; half confused half terrified by the way Hajime was looking at him. There was something crepitating in his eyes, in his entire body, like a fire or a scream, and Tooru felt as if he had done something extremely wrong. And he had done it: being in love with him for as long he could remember, taking advantage of their friendship like this.

“What the fuck did you just say?”, Hajime insisted with a roar.

“Which part?”

“The _even harder_ part?”

“What with it?”

“You’re not in love with me.”

“Well, Iwa-chan, I don’t think this is an argument you can win over.”

“It’s not an argument! You’re not!”

“I _am!_ ”, Tooru snarled. “Fuck, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t do it on purpose!”

Hajime got up too, pulling up his pants before sitting cross-legged over the blankets, and suddenly a hot-white shame urged Tooru to cover himself with one of them. At least he was still wearing his white t-shirt from the night before. At least he was half-clothed while Hajime hid his face behind his hands and roared into them. Tooru was about to throw up.

“That’s why the woods put us together.”

Hajime’s voice sounded muffled against his fingers. Panic petrified him, and Tooru opened his lips one, two, three times before finally getting to say:

“I didn’t ask Him to put us together! I swear I’m not like that, _Hajime_ , please… Please, I didn’t.”

“No, _shut up!_ I’m not saying… Fuck, I’m not saying _you_ asked for _me._ ”

Those big hands reached for Tooru’s jaw and he closed his eyes, at the edge of losing it, while Hajime got closer and closer and forced Tooru to look at him.

“Oikawa, listen. The woods did it on purpose.”

“The woods don’t love me enough to turn you into a present for me,” Tooru almost roared, rage slipping through lips and teeth, venomous.

And then Hajime was laughing. _Laughing._ And something else, too, as Tooru noted that Hajime’s eyelashes were thick with… with tears? God, he had fucked it up. He had fucked everything up.

“I know.”

His voice sounded soft.

“Hajime.”

“I’m sorry, words are not my thing.” Silence. “What I meant was the woods paired us up for a reason. Because He knew. Not only that, _god,_ that you were in love with me…”

“I’m still in love with you now,” Tooru objected, frowning.

Hajime talked over him:

“But also that I was in love with you too.”

Silence again. Tooru blinked, confused and lost, while Hajime stroked his face with both thumbs, waiting for him to finally understand. And then he did it, relief undulating inside him like a wave and escaping his lips in a long, long breath. He felt tears at his eyes, too, but he was too numb to react properly. He just:

“You gave me the scare of my life just to tell me you love me too? What the fuck, Hajime!”

“I know, I’m sorry, but you didn’t shut up! And I’m not good at this!”

“At what!?”

“At confessing, I suppose?”

“No, you’re not fucking good at this.”

But it looked like Hajime was good at other things, like kissing him instead of saying sorry again and again and again (kissing him again and again and again). Tooru whimpered, his agitated breathing slowly calming while Hajime kept leaving here and there tiny kisses that were meant to reassure him. And, hell, they were working.

Finally, Tooru managed to pull out, and Hajime looked at him right in the eyes, waiting for him to say something else than “shit” or “fuck, Hajime”.

“Are you telling me that the nature itself put us together in some crazy bacchanal just to force us to confess?”

Hajime chuckled.

“Well… something like that. Nature is wise, as my grandma says.”

“Now I understand… so many things.”

“Me too.”

Tooru smiled at him. Hajime kissed his lips again before pulling Tooru back to the blankets. He grunted something when Tooru held him close with arms and legs, but he didn’t listen; he just stayed there, eyes closed and smile wide, feeling Hajime’s body against his.

And Tooru couldn’t say anything else but thanks. Thanks to the woods, to the moon, to the Lupercalia. Because this February he had hoped to connect with someone else, with someone new. With someone that could take his childhood friend out of his head.

Not this year, it seemed.

Thanks for that, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all! Hope you've enjoyed this as much as I did while writing it!!
> 
> Just like the abstinence in the Courting, comments are not required, but encouraged 😉
> 
> See you soon!
> 
> PS: I was at the edge of cutting out the part where Hajime almost cries because it felt too much cheesy but then I remembered that we see Hajime cry in the canon so I left it just as it was. We stan an emotional boi.

**Author's Note:**

> Three nights, three chapters, three Saturdays.
> 
> See you next week, hope you'll like this!


End file.
